Tracking your Investment: RBS Share Price

The chief exectutive of Royal Bank of Scotland recently hinted that the bank is to be privatised. Word on the ground think that this may happen in late 2014 or early 2015 but no date has been set in stone as of yet. What does this mean for RBS share price performance?

The Shoots of Recovery

In early 2013 RBS announced losses for the fifth year in a row. However, this does not signal doom and gloom as 2012 heralded a rise in RBS share prices to the tune of 25% over the twelve months. 2013 is expected to bring greater increases to share prices as the bank recovers from the financial crash first and foremost and also puts more recent setbacks to bed.

After the British government bailed out RBS in late 2008, and esentially made it a state run enterprise, share prices began to rise steadily again. Recently, however, RBS has been hit by a number of issues that have negatively affected share prices. In late March 2013, the RBS share price took a big tumble as the bank was sued for its decision to raise around £12 billion in shareholder funds back in 2008. This money was raised only a couple of months prior to RBS collapsing as the economic downturn hit hard. Once the full extent of the crash was made clear, RBS shares had fallen by a whopping 95%. There were also the much publicised IT glitches that affected customers trust in RBS.

The trend for RBS in the short to medium term is that it will bounce back from these legal wranglings and share prices will steadily rise in the coming period. Currently, share prices are down but it is expected they will rise above the recent high of 368 witnessed at the end of January.

Your Go-To Tracking Sites

To keep up to date with the latest RBS share price movement, we recommend a few sites that provide live share prices. You can keep tabs on RBS share prices through London South East (http://www.lse.co.uk), Yahoo Finance UK & Ireland (uk.finance.yahoo.com) and Shareprice (www.shareprice.co.uk/RBS).